Discovery of an X-ray nebula around PSR J1718-3825 and implications for the nature of the gamma-ray source HESS J1718-385

J. A. Hinton, S. Funk, S. Carrigan, Y. A. Gallant, O. C. de Jager, K. Kosack, A. Lemière, G. Pühlhofer

Published 2007-10-01Version 1

Combined X-ray synchrotron and inverse-Compton gamma-ray observations of pulsar wind nebulae (PWN) may help to elucidate the processes of acceleration and energy loss in these systems. In particular, such observations provide constraints on the particle injection history and the magnetic field strength in these objects. The newly discovered TeV gamma-ray source HESS J1718-385 has been proposed as the likely PWN of the high spin-down luminosity pulsar PSR J1718-3825. The absence of previous sensitive X-ray measurements of this pulsar, and the unusual energy spectrum of the TeV source, motivated observations of this region with XMM-Newton. The data obtained reveal a hard spectrum X-ray source at the position of PSR 1718-3825 and evidence for diffuse emission in the vicinity of the pulsar. We derive limits on the keV emission from the centroid of HESS J1718-385 and discuss the implications of these findings for the PWN nature of this object.